This December is heavy with major movies — Zero Dark Thirty, This is 40, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Django Unchained and Les Misérables — that are literally (use the bathroom first) and metaphorically big. As they dominate the year-end conversation, it seems like a good moment to to call out some films that may not earn many mentions at award shows and top ten lists, but nevertheless charmed, entertained or impressed me throughout the year.
This fascinating documentary about the relatively new world of independently made video games follows the maker of an established hit, a team preparing to debut their work and a guy who’s been toiling for years on something that’s still not finished. It’s a look at the ambitious far reaches of a medium that’s been dominated by the equivalent of blockbusters for most of its existence, and at what it means to strive for something personal and artistically inclined in a world just learning to appreciate those qualities.
Ira Sachs’ film about the ups and downs of a decade-long romance is based on his own relationship, and has the sting of the personal in the way it tracks how the needy Eric (Thure Lindhardt) and the drug-addicted Paul (Zachary Booth) support, hurt and enable each other. It’s a painfully honest look at how we can keep returning to the things we know are bad for us, and what it takes to finally pull away.
3. Sparkle
Yes, it comes with the baggage of featuring an unhappy, exhausted-looking Whitney Houston in her last role and serving as the acting debut of American Idol winner Jordin Sparks. But Sparkle is an interesting, complex consideration of African American womanhood and what…
Full Story »With a turn as the sinister Billy Crash in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Walton Goggins nails his second supporting appearance in a period Oscar contender this season. (His other 2012 prestige performance? Playing the meek Clay Hutchins in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.) Goggins sat down with Movieline/Behind the Trailer’s Grace Randolph to talk the necessary difficulties of depicting the brutality of slavery, why the need for retribution is utterly human, and how he feels about the path his career has taken during his two decades as a rising character actor.
Get more on Django Unchained, in theaters Christmas Day.
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Pedro Almodóvar has taken a rather dark turn in his last couple of outings including 2011’s The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces (2009). Speaking in Cannes in 2011, Almodóvar admitted that he has a dark outlook on life, at least then, but he is still very capable of pulling out a comedy. And this teaser for his latest, I’m So Excited appears to be just that.
[Related: 'Zero Dark Thirty' Bows A New & Haunting Trailer]
There are not many detail about the film that his longtime U.S. distributor Sony Pictures Classics will open domestically sometime in 2013, but its stars include Carlos Areces, Raul Arevalo, Javier Cámara, Lola Dueñas, Carmen Machi, Laya Martí, Cecilia Roth, Hugo Silva, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, and Blanca Suárez.
The clip seems to indicate I’m So Excited (a not-so-subtle reference to the Pointer Sisters early ’80s hit) will be a high-flying Laugh Out Loud adventure complete with dancing queen flight attendants and at least one pilot asleep on the job. And even Pedro himself appears to be a passenger (seated in the back in the top image).
Almodóvar teased two Mays ago he was working on a comedy and even his first English-language script, though I’m So Excited or Los amantes pasajeros, which is its official Spanish title, appears to be firmly in his Spanish roots.
The trailer follows with English subtitles.
By all indications at the LA press day the principals involved in Alex Cross are happy as plums with the pic director Rob Cohen delivered, which sees Tyler Perry (of Madea fame) making his action hero debut on Friday. So is it any wonder that a deal is underway already with novelist James Patterson to start work on Double Cross, the next in what Summit and QED International hope is another fruitful Perry franchise?
Based on Patterson’s popular crime novels, Alex Cross follows a detective/profiler (Perry) as he challenges a serial killer named Picasso (Matthew Fox, in a memorably crazed turn) who kills with perverse pleasure — and has targeted people close to the detective. The two then engages him in a dangerous cat and mouse game against the backdrop of a decayed Detroit.
It’s Perry’s first film solely as an actor following a tremendously successful run of niche films, television, and theater projects that have grossed over half a billion dollars to date with Perry producing, directing, writing, and/or starring. Alex Cross is, fittingly enough, his big crossover push as well as his first action role, and given his loyal following it’s not surprising that the studio’s banking on a big enough opening from the modestly-budgeted $25M pic to warrant a sequel.
For his part, Patterson voiced his support of Perry’s star turn filling the shoes of the iconic character previously portrayed by Morgan Freeman in Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. He described Perry as a more accurate embodiment of Alex Cross, who’s described in the novels as a 6′3″, 200 lb. family man who’s close to his grandmother.
Addressing the idea of writing yet more novels in his 20-book Alex Cross series, the poised, brash Patterson answered,…
Full Story »No matter how hard they try, it’s highly unlikely any actress/singer/starlet will ever come close to portraying famed Depression-era outlaw Bonnie Parker like Faye Dunaway did in Arthur Penn’s game-changing Bonnie and Clyde. But no matter! That won’t stop Miley Cyrus from being the latest to give the fantastically stylish bank robber a try, as she’s slated to do in the four-hour History Channel/Lifetime miniseries Bonnie & Clyde.
Parker and her paramour Clyde Barrow have been depicted about a dozen times in TV and film dating back to 1958’s The Bonnie Parker Story, starring WB player Dorothy Provine. (Herstory, see what I did there?) Once Penn’s classic burst onto the cinescape and tommy gunned its way into film history — helped along in no small part by Dunaway, who was Oscar-nominated for her turn as Parker — no film or television property has successfully made a mark retelling the Parker-Barrow lore.
But the reckless romanticism of their tale is too rich to ignore; hence, the many musical iterations of the Bonnie & Clyde mythos. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot channeled the duo for their 1968 collaboration album Bonnie and Clyde, headlined by the titular track featuring Bardot’s sensual cooing; in Parker’s signature beret, Bardot is the vision of Bonnie Parker’s sensual French reincarnate. Many others have paid homage to this homage in turn, including actress Scarlett Johansson, who whisper-crooned her way through a 2011 cover with Gainsbourg’s son Lulu.
My favorite post-Gainsbourg musical riff on the duo? Jay-Z and Beyonce’s “‘03 Bonnie and Clyde,” which itself uses a sample of Tupac’s 1996 track “Me and My Girlfriend,” a song inspired by Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde film.
More recently, former tween idol Hilary Duff was…
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